Fun With Keywords: Fierce and Nerdy Edition

"ricardo montalban" "adrian pasdar"IMDB doesn’t show any projects in which these two classy, suave actors appeared together. Pity -- they would have complemented each other well.

"not watching the olympics"I’m not either. Mind you, I’m sure I could get sucked into the Olympic drama easily enough -- I just haven’t bothered turning the television on.

"manchurian apricot" recipe -site:wikipedia.org -site:foodista.com -site:bigoven.com -sitejcooks.com -site:cookstr.com -site:allrecipes.com -site:epicurious.com -site:foodnetwork.com -site:recipezaar.comi -site:alanrosenberg.blogspot.comAny of those sites would be a much, much better place to find recipes using Manchurian apricots than this one.

"fierce and nerdy"While I like to consider myself both fierce and nerdy, you are probably looking for this excellently-named site.are seven signs of the apocalypse legitDepends entirely on whether you classify the Bible as legit. Revelations 5 through 11 are what you’re looking for.

box 500 ultimate forceTobias Menzies, of Rome and Casino Royale fame.

cheerleaders who are spiesSounds fabulous. I suspect this is a project either Boy-Morgan or Dan will know all about. Gentlemen?

on psych what is d'onofrioed meanwhat does it mean to be d'onofrioedIn Full Metal Jacket, Vincent D’Onofrio’s character, Private Pyle, was badly beaten with towel-wrapped bars of soap. Hence: D’Onofrioed.

foto pene tom wellingtom welling panis photoSome yearnings transcend all language barriers. The desire to see pictures of Tom Welling’s wang is apparently one of them. Then again, in the Rig Veda, the Panis were a kind of demon, so maybe that second searcher is looking for something completely different.

what learnings can be absorbed in the show gleeOh, dear. There are many excellent reasons to watch Glee. “Educational value” is not one of those reasons.

when does chapter six of heros come out?There’s been no word yet from NBC as to whether Heroes will be renewed for another season. Anything could happen, but after last volume’s dismal ratings, the prognosis is grim.

why doesn't morgan love skulky the turtle wonder any moreBlasphemy! I will always love Skulky the Turtle Wonder, the unchallenged breakout star of Volume Three of Heroes. It’s just Heroes that I don’t love any more, dig?

why was claire evil in the alternate future?Because they wanted to stick poor Hayden Panettiere in that brunette wig again.

pasdar wanted off heroes sinking shipCouldn't blame him, if that turns out to be the case. Still, evidence suggests Pasdar was sort of blindsided by getting dismissed from Heroes, at least according to such usually-reliable sources as Nikki Finke at Deadline Hollywood and Ausiello at Entertainment Weekly. And Dawn Olivieri, who played Lydia on the show, said of Pasdar’s dismissal, “I know for a fact that he was surprised with the release because it wasn't really told to him as one would like.”

However, series creator Tim Kring disputed all this in an interview with TV Guide: “We talked openly with Adrian about [his departure] several months ago and have kept him abreast of where his arc was headed—he always knew what was going on,” Kring says. “This is a guy who is much loved by us all, and these disparaging reports about the way things were handled couldn’t be further from the truth.”

So there are a couple contradictory versions of events, with nothing to suggest which, if either, is closer to the truth. For the record, I'd like to hold onto my early impression of the Heroes gang as one happy family, so I hope Kring's version is the truth. If there's anything to suggest Pasdar wanted off of the show, though, I've heard nothing about it.

what happened with mohinderExcellent question, and I don’t have an answer. Let’s look at the timeline:

Spring 2009: Heroes wraps its third season. Sendhil Ramamurthy heads to London to film It’s a Wonderful Afterlife.

First week of June 2009: Heroes begins production on the fourth season. Sendhil, however, is now in Vancouver, filming his guest appearance on an episode of Psych.

July 18, 2009: Sendhil appears at London Film & Comic Con, sporting a hilarious, monstrous furry beard. According to a report from a convention attendee, he states that: a) he has already done some filming for the new season, and b) the beard is specifically for Heroes.

July 25, 2009: At San Diego Comic Con, Tim Kring is asked a direct question about Mohinder, who does not appear in any of the teasers or promotional materials for the new season. Kring responds thusly:“We're going to be telling less stories per episode," says Tim. "The idea is to tell deeper stories but not as wide stories. It's always been a juggling act with a show like this because it's always been a large cast. We don't have quite as much bouncing around this season as we did in the past." Translation: Don't hold your breath, Mohinder fans.

September, 2009: The fourth season of Heroes premieres. Mohinder does not appear in the first eight episodes. When he finally makes an appearance in an episode airing in mid-November, he has no monstrous furry beard, nor will he have one for the entire remainder of the season. (Also, it turns out Mohinder has been dead for eight weeks, and no one has noticed. Sucks to be Mohinder.)

From September through November, Wendi, the nice Heroes key makeup artist, tweets intermittently on her Twitter account about Sendhil being on set doing some filming.

October 8, 2009: Kristin Dos Santos at E! Online reports that the powers-that-be at Heroes are considering killing off Mohinder, because they feel they’ve exhausted his character (scroll waaaaay down to comment #509).

November 2, 2009: Heroes star Greg Grunberg does a radio interview where he says Sendhil was filming a movie at the beginning of the season, which explains his absence in the first chunk of episodes. This is the first time this has been mentioned publicly, and there are no reports of Sendhil working on any film in 2009 apart from It’s a Wonderful Afterlife. Which is not to say no such movie exists, but if it does, it has never been mentioned in the trades, nor has Sendhil ever referred to it in interviews.

November 30, 2009: The Hollywood Reporter breaks the news that Sendhil has been cast in a new NBC pilot, Rex is Not Your Lawyer.

December 4, 2009: From the website ScreenJunkies:“Our source tells us that Ramamurthy got a pilot and asked the writers to write him out. They obliged. Everyone loves Sendhil Ramamurthy and his character, but the truth is he didn't have a lot of screen time this season, and the writers felt they shouldn't stand in the way of the actor's future. Look for Mohinder Suresh to make his exeunt in an episode airing in late January.”

December 7, 2009: Sendhil is replaced by Jerry O’Connell in Rex is Not Your Lawyer.

December 15, 2009: Tim Kring says Sendhil was filming a movie during the first part of the season, and thus Heroes was not able to use him as much as they wanted to.

Late December, 2009: Apart from a few final pickup shots in early January, the fourth season of Heroes wraps.

Second week of January, 2010: Sendhil arrives in Mumbai for Shor. He spends a couple weeks filming, then heads to Sundance to promote It’s a Wonderful Afterlife in late January.

January 18, 2010: Mohinder makes his final appearance on Heroes for the season, which ends two episodes later.

February, 2009: In a video interview from Sundance, Sendhil clearly states that It’s a Wonderful Afterlife did not conflict with the Heroes production schedule: “It fit exactly in the hiatus between season three and four. It worked out perfectly.”

February 5, 2010: Screen India publishes an interview with Sendhil from Mumbai, in which he says, “I am on a contract for Heroes for three more seasons and they want me to come back. But if that doesn’t work out, there are a couple of things lined up. I am ready to move on after Heroes.”

February 15, 2010: Heroes staff writer Oliver Grigsby blogs about the absence of Mohinder in the final episodes of the fourth season: “However, an amazing opportunity came up for the actor so at the last minute we reconstructed the scene so that he leaves. Sendhil Ramamurthy fans should keep an eye out on his imdb page for some upcoming announcements. So while it wasn't ideal for the episode, it was a small price to allow the actor a great opportunity.”

I believe the technical term for all of the above is “clusterfuck.” My endless gratitude to anyone who can come up with a Grand Unified Theory (yes, that’s an incorrect usage of the term, but if Heroes can cheerfully botch physics concepts for their own purposes, as it did in the episode “Strange Attractors," so can I) that reconciles all the above information into a single cohesive theory.

Writer. Publisher and owner of Luft Books. An Angeleno adrift in New York City, I've got a BFA in screenwriting from USC's film school, a fiendish love of pop culture, and a Duran Duran lyric for every occasion. Reach me on Twitter or at me_richter(at)yahoo(dot)com.

Comments

Oh how I love these posts! I wonder if someone was thinking that Adrian Pasdar is the new Ricardo Montalban? I should like to hear Mr. Pasdar speak with a schmaltzy accent before casting my vote.

"cheerleaders who are spies?"I can't help but think they're actually looking for schoolgirls who are spies? I recorded D.E.B.S. on my Tivo about six months ago and refuse to delete it. Why don't I just buy it on DVD I wonder? If there's a D.E.B.S. for the cheerleader set I'll watch it. Just point me to it.

Are you sure that seeing Ali Larter in a bathtub is worth sitting through those episodes? They were not the best episodes ever. Really, I think you'd be better off doing a google image search for "Ali Larter" and turning off the safe search filter. I mean, if that's what you're looking for.

"no chemistry between ioan gruffudd & jessica alba":My theory is that Jessical Alba was afraid of him due to the size of his Welsh package.

I'm enamored of the idea of Tom Welling's demon. Or is that a "pants demon" they're after? In which case never mind.

I think it was bizarre and optimistic of the FF producers to stick Gruffudd and Alba -- two very different types of actors -- together in a movie and expect there to be believable chemistry between them. Still, by all accounts they got along just fine -- just audiences didn't really buy them as a romantic pair.

I think I'm going to go about proclaiming Adrian Pasdar as the new Ricardo Montalban. I saw Montalban in person a few years back at the premiere of "Selena: The Musical" (at the Ricardo Montalban Theater in Hollywood, no less). It was post-stroke, and he was using a walker, but the man still had presence.

I think you've covered everything pertaining to The Mohinder Situation. Either there are two mistery movies, or Kring and Grigsby have provided us with false information.

Speaking of misteries, I'm afraid that Mohinder's beard for Heroes will forever remain one, as well as a cockroach-related storyline Greg Grunberg tweeted about in August ("It involves a cockroach and it was incredible!"). I wonder if The Cockroach was somehow connected to The Beard... Um, this connection better be metaphorical.

Let me back up Boy-Morgan by saying they were looking for D.E.B.S, the finest (and only) cheerleader/spy movie out there.

Stars Jordana Brewster and Devon Aoki, which actually gives it one degree of separation from Heroes (Jordana Brewster and Clea DuVall in The Faculty, Clea DuVall as the sadly missed Agent Audrey from first-season Heroes)

Dear, dear. My longtime companion, Manchurian Apricot, and I seem to have lead a would be cook to your website. I'm proud of my cider and applejack, while Manchy produces an excellent apricot brand, but the recipes are family secrets.

Entspinster, I believe you did inadvertently lead a would-be chef horribly astray with your earlier mention of your longtime companion! These keywords are more powerful than people might think. No recipes to be found here, with or without Manchurian apricots.

And now I'm nostalgic for the monstrous beard-and-cockroach plotline that never was. Perhaps it'll crop up as a deleted scene on the DVDs.

I have never seen D.E.B.S., though I like both Jordana and Devon.

I think it would be awesome beyond belief if evidence emerges that makes sense of all this Mohinder nonsense over the past season, particularly if we discover that Sendhil had indeed filmed a couple of amazing and exciting top-secret projects at the start and end of the last season of Heroes. That'd be great... but apart from the projects that are well-documented online (Afterlife and Shor, neither of which conflicted with the Heroes schedule), there's nothing to suggest this is the case. Not saying it's impossible, though.

Ah, well. People can be misquoted in interviews. People can accidentally misspeak in interviews. And different people can view the same set of circumstances and come up with completely different interpretations (i.e. Dawn Olivieri can sincerely believe Pasdar's departure was handled poorly, while Kring can just as sincerely believe it was handled well). Some of that might be happening with both the Pasdar and Sendhil situations above.

Take Grigsby's statements in his post: “However, an amazing opportunity came up for the actor so at the last minute we reconstructed the scene so that he leaves," immediately followed by "Sendhil Ramamurthy fans should keep an eye out on his imdb page for some upcoming announcements." The first sentence could (and probably does) refer to Rex is Not Your Lawyer, which was an amazing opportunity, and which the ScreenJunkies article claimed was the reason Sendhil was written off of Heroes. The sentence immediately following that, then, would just be misdirection: Sendhil may have something great in the works -- indeed, he implied as much in his Screen India interview -- but it's not Rex is Not Your Lawyer. The first sentence might not be related to the second, but Grigsby might've legitimately combined the two thoughts for the sake of efficiency, because the end result would be the same: Sendhil is no longer on Heroes because something better came up. If that's the case, great. Time will tell.

I'm sure that's exactly the case with Alba. Her affections might in fact be torn between you and the New Ricardo Montalban, which (quite naturally) makes her unable to have believable onscreen chemistry with anyone else. Simple, really, and rather sad.

Unlike you, I am watching the Olympics and bemoaning CTV's coverage (I'm biased, I always loved CBC's coverage...sorry, Canadian network wars). Ever since I was 12 I've dreamed about being a Short Track Speed Skater. Add in the relay and it looks insane.

Nice Mohinder time line. Poor guy.

I once saw Jessica Alba in person (I was downtown, she walked by). It was when she was still sporting that blond mess on her head. I hate that colour on her. Totally washes her out. Needless to say she looked like every other pretty woman I see on a regular basis. I tried watching the "Fantastic Four" movies and find them painful.

I think the Fantastic Four movies set out to make lovely Jessica Alba look as plain and wan as possible -- the blonde hair just didn't work on her. Then again, Alba's hair was one of the lesser problems on those films.

I can't help it, though. I find that first FF movie hilarious and weirdly charming, if totally half-assed. Sometimes I'm very easy to please.

Oh, Mohinder... Yeah. I don't know if anything more needs to be said. I've written enough words about Heroes, and it's become too easy of a target for ridicule. Here's hoping everyone gets off the sinking ship in time, and that there are enough lifeboats to go around.

(I've been hired to ghostwrite a novel with a maritime theme. Expect many tortured seafaring metaphors from me in the coming weeks.)

Speaking of guilty pleasures, you'll be happy to hear I've Netflixed Girls Just Want To Have Fun for my next Life Beyond Thunderdome column. I'm anxious to see if it holds up -- I haven't seen it in a decade or more.

Thank you. The ghostwriting gig is actually very, very cool. I can't give particulars, naturally, but it's legit, it's for a good company, and I'm enjoying the work.

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Writer. Publisher and owner of Luft Books. An Angeleno adrift in New York City, I've got a BFA in screenwriting from USC's film school, a fiendish love of pop culture, and a Duran Duran lyric for every occasion. Reach me on Twitter or at me_richter(at)yahoo(dot)com.

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